We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The Feds are watching -- badly

Click here to access article by Yael Chanoff and Natalie Orenstein from San Francisco Bay Guardian Online. 

People are examining thousands of documents obtained by the SF Bay Guardain, the ACLU, and The Asian Law Caucus and they are finding that racist stereotypes are being taught to identify various terrorist threats. The latter targets are Muslims, African Americans, Chinese, Russians, "anarchist extremists", and "animal rights/environmental extremists". 
...after 9/11, the FBI prioritized terrorism investigations, a shift from the previous focus on criminal investigations. Classified as national security threats, these investigations are not subject to the same type of privacy and anti-racial discrimination protections that other criminal investigations might be. Terrorist threats, apparently, are to be found in mosques, in online conversations that involve criticism of US foreign policy, in entire populations of African Americans or Chinese Americans in given areas. In recent years, simply speaking Arabic online or being black makes a person a suspect and potential target of surveillance.
Political operatives of the One Percent see enemies everywhere. But what--me worry? As long as they don't come for me, why should I care? (sarcasm) But wait, I think I have criticized US foreign policy in my blog!